Chegg Inc

CHGG

Chegg Inc

@darius
1 year ago

How Do They Make Money?

How Do They Make Money?

Interesting stock - its price is completely dumpstered compared to Covid era hype thanks to AI stealing its market share and growth potential, but from a money printer standpoint its undervalued.


Its not growing in subscribers but it has a decent subscriber base with high profit margins since its entirely service based software rather than a physical product.

They've slashed headcount by 21% to reduce costs, the earnings drop comes from them zeroing out their 630 mill Goodwill (branding) valuation with no actual impact on cash stores. They also settled a 55 million dollar lawsuit in Q3 which made the PE ratio negative despite actually continuing to be net profitable.

"We had 2 notable items this quarter. First, we recorded an impairment charge against our goodwill, as a result of continued industry pressure and declines in our market capitalization and as required by accounting rules, we completed an impairment test on our goodwill, which resulted in a $196 million noncash impairment charge that was excluded from our Q3 adjusted EBITDA. Second, we reached a settlement agreement to resolve Leventhal class action securities lawsuit. We recorded $55 million for the estimated contingent liability for the loss, along with a $55 million receivable for the insurance proceeds we expect to see. These amounts had no impact on our Q3 adjusted EBITDA.
They are not growing, but theyre holding relatively steady as a cash printer. I view this stock as an old school Buffett style cigar-butt with a not unreasonable 3x upside potential just based on current FCF."

It is also high risk, but at this valuation I believe the reward may outweigh the risk. I've posted more research on the discord